The road was festooned with old butcheries and destructions. But the disaster had not been complete. Nearer the city there were people in the fields, and more and more as the miles passed, backs bowed with the weight of tragedies old and new.
Man is born to sorrow and despair… Smeds shuddered his way out of that. Him wallowing in philosophical bullshit?
They crested a rise, saw the city. The wall was covered with scaffolding. Despite the late hour, men were rebuilding it. Soldiers in gray supervised. Imperials.
"Gray boys," Tully grumbled. "Here comes trouble."
"I doubt it," Fish said.
"How come?"
"There'd be more of them if they were looking for trouble. They're just making sure the repairs get done right."
Tully harumphed and scowled and muttered to himself but did not argue. He had overlooked the obvious. Imperials were sticklers for getting things done right, obsessive about keeping military works in repair.
The only delay was occasioned by the construction, not by the soldiers. Tully was not pleased. He was sick of Fish looking smarter than him. Smeds was afraid he would start improvising, trying to do something about that. Something stupid, probably.
"Holy shit," Smeds said, soft as a prayer, half a dozen times, as they walked through the city. Buildings were being demolished, rehabilitated, or built where old structures had been razed. "They really tore the old town a new asshole."
Which left him uncomfortable. There were people he wanted to see. Were they still alive, even?
Wonderstruck, Tully said, "I never seen so many soldiers. Least not since I was a kid." They were everywhere, helping with reconstruction, supervising, policing, billeted in tents pitched where buildings had been razed. Was the whole damned city inundated with troops?
Smeds saw standards, uniforms, and unit emblems he'd never seen before. "Something going on here," he said. "We better be careful." He indicated a hanged man dangling from a roof tree three stories up.
"Martial law," Fish said. "Means the wise guys are upset. You're right, Smeds. We walk real careful till we find out what's going on and why."
They headed for the place Tully stayed first, it being closest. It was not there anymore. Tully was not distressed. "I'll just stay with you till I get set," he told Smeds.
But Smeds had not paid any rent, so they had thrown his junk into the street for scavengers—after cashing in his empties and stealing what they wanted for themselves— then had let the room to people dispossessed by the disaster. Fish's place had gone the way of Tully's. The old man was not surprised. He said nothing. He did look a little more gaunt and haggard and slumped.
"So maybe we can all stuff in at my old lady's place," Timmy said. He was jittery. Smeds figured it was his hand. "Just for tonight. My old man, he don't like anybody I hang around with."
Timmy's parents owned the place they lived, though they were as poor as anybody else on the North Side. Smeds had heard they got it as a payoff from the gray boys for informing back in the days when there was still a lot of Rebel activity in Oar. Timmy would not say. Maybe it was true.
Who cared anymore? They'd probably been on the right side. The imperials were more honest, and better governors, if you were at a social level where who was in charge made any difference.
Smeds did not give a rat's ass who ran things as long as they left him alone. Most people felt that way.
"Timmy! Timmy Locan!"
They stopped, waited while an older woman overhauled them. As she waddled up, Timmy said, "Mrs. Cisco. How are you?"
"We thought you were dead with the rest of them, Timmy. Forty thousand people they killed that night.…"
"I was out of the city, Mrs. Cisco. I just got back."
"You haven't been home yet?"
People jostled them in the narrow street. It was three-quarters dark but there were so many soldiers around nobody needed to run inside to hide from the night. Smeds wondered what the bad boys were doing. Working?
"I said I just got in."
Smeds saw he did not like the woman much.
She went all sad and consoling. Even Smeds, who did not consider himself perceptive, saw she was just busting because she was going to get to be the first to pass along some bad news.
"Your dad and both your brothers… I'm sorry. They were trying to help fight the fires. Your mother and sister… Well, they were conquerors. They did what conquerors always do. Your sister, they mutilated her so bad she ended up killing herself a couple weeks ago."
Timmy shook like he was about to go into convulsions.
"That's enough, madam," Fish said. "You've buried your blade to the heart."
She sputtered, "Why, the nerve…"
Tully said, "Piss off, bitch. Before I kick your ass up around your ears." He used that gentle, even tone Smeds knew meant maximum danger.
So. Cousin Tully had a little canker of humanity hidden away after all. Though he would not admit it on the rack.
"I can't handle this," Timmy said. "I think I better stay dead." Fish said, "That woman won't let you rest in peace,
Timmy."
"I know. I'll do what I got to do. But not now. I know a place called the Skull and Crossbones where we can put up cheap. If it's still there."
It was there. It was a place the invaders would have ignored as too contemptible to burn. It made Smeds think of a hooker still working twenty years past her prime, pathetic and desperate.
An imperial corporal sat in a chair out front, leaning back against a wooden wall that had forgotten the meaning of paint. He held a bucket of beer in his lap. He seemed to be napping. But when they were a few steps from the door he opened his eyes, checked them over, nodded, took a drink.
"Catch his emblem?" Smeds asked Fish inside. "Yes. Nightstalkers."
The Nightstalker Brigade was the crack outfit in the northern army, rigorously trained for night operations and combat under wizard's war conditions.
Smeds said, "I thought they were out east somewhere, trying to finish the Black Company." The proudest honor on the standard of the Nightstalkers was their defeat of the Black Company at Queen's Bridge. Before Queen's Bridge those mercenaries had been so glibly invincible that half the empire had been convinced the gods themselves were on their side.
"They're here now." "What the hell is going on around here?" "Guess we better find out. What we don't know could I eat us up."
Timmy talked to the owner, whom he knew slightly. The man claimed he was full up with the dispossessed. None of those guests were evident. He hinted he might find space, though, if fate took a hand. Fishing for a bribe, Smeds figured. Which he would follow with a deep gouge.
"How much leverage on fate are we talking?" Timmy asked.
"Obol and a half. Each."
"You goddamned thief!"
"Take it or leave it."
The Nightstalker corporal stepped past Smeds and Timmy and plunked his bucket down in front of the landlord, who had gone as pale as death. "That's twice today, dogmeat. And this time I heard it myself."
The landlord gulped air, grabbed the bucket, and started to fill it.
"Don't try," the corporal said. "Offer me a bribe and you'll stay on the labor gang forever." He eyed Timmy and Smeds. "You guys pick yourself a room. On old Shit for Brains here for a night."
"I was just joshing with the guys, Corporal."
"Sure. I could tell. You had them rolling around on the floor. Bet you'll have the guy in the black mask in stitches. He loves you comedians."
Smeds asked, "What's going on around here, Corporal? We've been out of town."
"I could tell. I guess you can see your basic situation. Some bandits and deserters tore the place up. They wasn't too happy about that, down to the Tower. Since we was in the neighborhood we was one of the outfits got to come in and keep order. The brigadier, she started out life in the slums of Nihil, she figures here's a chance to get even with the kinds of assholes who made life hell when she was a kid. So you got thieves hanging from the roof trees. You got your pimps and priests and pushers, your sharpers and your fences and your whores won't learn no better working on the labor gangs eighteen hours a day so your regular citizens can get on with putting their lives back together.